Wrap-up insurance (OCIP / CCIP)

One policy for the whole site

Ordinarily every party on a job carries their own insurance and you collect a certificate from each. A wrap-up inverts that. One party buys a single program covering the project, everyone working on it enrolls, and that program is what responds to a loss on the site. It is called a wrap-up because it wraps the whole job into one policy instead of stitching together a dozen.

Who buys it is the only thing the two acronyms distinguish. An OCIP — owner-controlled insurance program — is bought by the project owner. A CCIP — contractor-controlled — is bought by the general contractor. From the position of a subcontractor being asked to enroll, and from yours if you are checking their paperwork, the two behave identically.

The reason anyone does this is scale. On a large project, buying one set of limits for everybody is usually cheaper than every trade buying their own, the sponsor knows exactly what cover is in place rather than inferring it from certificates, and disputes between two enrolled parties are largely arguments inside one policy rather than between two carriers.

Why the check you normally run stops working

This is the part that catches people out, because nothing about the paperwork announces it. You are holding a subcontractor's certificate, the general liability limits look thin or the line is missing altogether, and by your usual standard that is a problem. On an enrolled scope it is not — the coverage for that work is the program's, and their own policy was never meant to answer.

Run the same check on a sub who is not enrolled, or on a scope the wrap-up excludes, and the thin limits mean exactly what they normally mean. The certificate looks the same in both cases. What tells them apart is knowing which of your subs are enrolled and for which scope — and that lives in the program's enrollment records and the wrap-up manual, not on any ACORD 25 you will be sent.

What stays on your sub's policy

A wrap-up covers the site, not the subcontractor. Several exposures are routinely left outside it, and those are the ones your own file still has to account for.

• Automobile liability is almost never in a wrap-up. Vehicles come and go from the site and belong to the sub — auto liability stays their own.
• Tools, equipment and materials they own or hire. That is property cover, and a wrap-up is a liability program.
• Off-site work — fabrication in their own shop, staging at a yard, deliveries. The program covers the described site.
• Workers' compensation may or may not be included; some programs wrap it and some do not. This is worth confirming rather than assuming, because it changes whether the employers liability limits on their certificate are load-bearing.

So you do still collect a certificate from an enrolled subcontractor. It is a shorter list than usual, and the general liability line on it is not the one doing the work.

The tail, and the gap at the end of it

Every wrap-up ends. The construction period closes, and the program's completed-operations cover — the part that answers a claim about the finished work — runs for some defined stretch after that. Two, five, ten years, depending on what was bought.

The exposure does not necessarily end with it. Statutes of repose in many states run longer than a typical wrap-up tail, so there can be a period where the work is still actionable and the program that covered it has expired. The subcontractor's own policy is often excluded from that work by CG 21 54, which is the point at which nobody's policy is the obvious answer. Asking the sponsor how long the completed-operations extension runs, and comparing it to your own exposure, is a question worth putting in writing at the start rather than discovering later.

That gap is also the reason the completed-operations additional-insured endorsement matters on the non-wrapped part of the same relationship. The two do not overlap as neatly as they look.

What to do with your own file

The drafting side of this — what your insurance exhibit should say when a job is wrapped, and what to name so an enrolled sub is not asked to buy cover twice — is set out in what to require before a sub starts. Off a wrapped job, none of it changes.

The filing side is simpler and mostly a matter of not losing the context. Record which subcontractors are enrolled and for which scope, keep the wrap-up manual with the project rather than in somebody's inbox, and keep collecting certificates for the coverage that stayed with the sub. A file that shows a thin general liability limit with no note explaining that the scope was wrapped is a file that reads as a failure to a reviewer two years from now.

Hi [Agent name],

[Project] is covered by a wrap-up program and [Sub name] is enrolled for their scope.

Could you send a current ACORD 25 covering what stays on their own policy — automobile liability, and workers' compensation if it is not included in the program — rather than general liability for the wrapped work?

If their general liability carries the consolidated-program exclusion (CG 21 54), please note that on the certificate or send the endorsement, so our file shows why the limits read the way they do.

Thanks,
[Your name], [Your company]